The Middle Ages, or Medieval Times, in Europe was a long period of history from 500 AD to 1500 AD.
It is different from the other periods because it covers the time from the fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of the Ottoman Empire. This was a time of castles and peasants, guilds and monasteries, cathedrals and crusades.
Composers: Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu was a French-born trouvère, poet and musician. Adam's literary and musical works include chansons and jeux-partis in the style of the trouvères; polyphonic rondel and motets in the style of early liturgical polyphony; and a musical play, "Jeu de Robin et Marion", which is considered the earliest surviving secular French play with music. He was a member of the Confrérie des jongleurs et bourgeois d'Arras.
Guillaume de Machaut was a medieval French poet and composer. He is regarded by many musicologists as the greatest and most important composer of the 14th century. Machaut is one of the earliest composers on whom substantial biographical information is available, and Daniel Leech-Wilkinson called him "the last great poet who was also a composer". Well into the 15th century, Machaut's poetry was greatly admired and imitated by other poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer.
Pérotin, also called Perotin the Great, was a European composer, believed to be French, who lived around the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century. He was the most famous member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the ars antiqua style. He was one of very few composers of his day whose name has been preserved, and can be reliably attached to individual compositions.
